by Rachel Vail
“Ew!” Cash said back. “You are so—”
“Stop, Cash,” I said, before I thought it through.
“Why? Is Pudding your girlfriend?” Cash asked me, his face all scrunchy and mean. “You love her now, too?”
“No,” I said.
“You do!” he said. “Did you give her that ring? You did! You’re gonna marry her? You love her!”
“No,” I said. “I’m not marrying anybody. I’m going into fourth grade. Duh.”
Xavier giggled at that.
“I didn’t give her the ring, obviously. But it’s hers, and she liked it and it broke. You’d cry, if that happened to you, right, Xavier?”
“No.”
“Your trophies?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, sure, if my trophies broke. But, I mean, they’re trophies.”
“I don’t have any trophies,” Penelope Ann Murphy said, not helping her cause at all.
Gianni laughed at that.
“Gianni? If you had something you cared about, and it broke?”
Gianni and I both still care about our stuffties, even if we don’t want people to know about that secret. He knew I could mention what would make him cry—if it broke—so he quickly said, “Yeah, sure, Justin Case. True.”
“Everybody cries sometimes,” Bartholomew Wiggins said.
“Absolutely,” Montana C. said.
“Everybody cries sometimes,” Cash said in a making fun of it voice, and then added, “Justin Case is just standing up for his girlfriend, because he loves her. Justin and Pudding sittin’ in a tree…”
“You know what?” I asked Cash, not fully knowing what myself, but just knowing for sure I did not want him to finish that dumb song.
“What?” Cash asked. “You love her?”
“I don’t know anybody as interested in love as you, Cash. You are the most in-love-with-love kid I ever met.”
He said, “You love her” a couple more times, but he stopped when people kept saying “in-love-with-love kid.” Which is good because my only idea left was maybe I should punch him right on his nose.
August 24, Tuesday
I punched Cash in the nose.
My fist pounded into the front of his face and smashed the whole thing into even more bits than Penelope Ann Murphy’s ring. There was blood everywhere, running in rivers down his face and making gunky puddles all over the tennis court.
All the Hawks cheered. James/Jay even smiled, and then put a gold medal on a red-white-and-blue ribbon around my neck.
“You are the hero of Camp GoldenBrook,” he said. “And my personal hero, too, Justin Krzeszewski.”
I said, “Wait, you know how to pronounce my last name?”
Before he could answer, Gingy and Poopsie danced with my third-grade teacher Ms. Termini across the top of the pool, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” very enthusiastically while Qwerty and my chewed-up knights played banjos together on a rainbow behind them.
Then I woke up and got ready for camp, where …
1. I didn’t win any medals, or
2. punch any noses, and
3. no old people sang loud patriotic songs on the pool.
Unfortunately, sort of fortunately, and very fortunately.
August 25, Wednesday
Today was the second-to-last day of Color War. Our second-to-last chance to catch those stinky Red Team kids who think they are so great.
I ate a healthy breakfast of disgusting gunk that Mom made when I asked for the healthiest thing possible and drank my whole glass of grapefruit juice even though grapefruit juice squinches my face very tight.
I am going to invent healthy food that tastes like gummy worms and become a millionaire when I am done with this whole camp thing.
The big event today was Obstacle Course. Obstacle Course means you have to do the terrible rings and not fall in the mud, which might have quicksand underneath it, but then you are not done yet. No way. That is not enough. Next you have to run down the big hill without tripping and then up the steps to the bridge. You have to go across the bridge very fast, but not running. Hopping. If your other foot touches the bridge planks, you have to go back to the beginning with everybody groaning and covering their faces in shame at you and then you have to start the hopping again. Then if you ever get to the other side of the bridge, you have to quickly pick up an egg out of a big blue bucket with a spoon and bring it to another big blue bucket across the field, without dropping it along the way. If you drop it, because you are trying to go faster to make up for lost time with the hopping and the quicksand delays, you get egg goo all over your sneakers. But too bad on you (okay, me) because you have to dash back all eggily to the first egg bucket, pick up a new egg, and please oh please try not to drop that one, too.
Then you have to do hurdles.
Hurdles are this thing that’s like running but watch out because whoops, in your way there are—I am not even joking—metal fence parts. Which obviously you should just go around. But no. That is not true in camp. You have to somehow just jump right on over the fences. Like you are a cow and the fence is the moon.
As I was running toward the first hurdle, I was thinking about that nursery rhyme and why would people teach that to a kid? A cow can’t jump over the moon. A cow can’t jump over anything. There is so much kids need to learn in life, and they are new on the planet, so it is kind of mean to waste their time teaching them a cow jumps over the moon.
And then I crashed into the first hurdle. Like a cow, crashing into a, well, not a moon. A bush. A cow running across a field planning to jump over the moon, which no way can it do, and crashing into a bush. Or a metal fence.
And then not learning from its mistake.
Because I had to get up and run toward the next hurdle.
Or maybe it is called a hurt-all. Because, OW.
One of my feet cleared the next hurdle. The other foot knocked it down. I fell flat on my knees after the third hurdle. I lay there on the track, looking at it, at the little pebbles I had a very close-up view of, while I made my excellent plan: to not get up off the track.
I figured if I just stayed there long enough, it would turn to winter and I could sneak home because camp would be done.
But then I heard the foghorn voice of my counselor James/Jay, and he was not saying, Hey, Justin, are you okay? Let me help you up, or anything nice like that. He was laughing.
Laughing because I fell down.
Laughing because I was lying on the track until winter.
That made my bottom teeth clench into a fist with my top teeth. I decided I would be bold, and mighty forces would come to my aid. I decided to pretend I was one of my unchewed knights and had superpowers of flying over hurdles and Feeling No Pain. I got up off the track, and with the horrible sound of that horrible counselor’s horrible laughter clanging in my ears, I ran faster than ever toward the next hurdle.
And smashed into it.
I got up and ran toward the next one.
I got the first foot over and the second foot mostly over, but the darn thing caught the tip of my sneaker, and down I went again.
I only stayed on the track for a few seconds before I pushed myself up and charged at the second-to-last hurdle. Which I kind of ran around. And then there was only one hurdle between me and the finish line. No other hurdlers were running anymore. I was not sure if they had all finished or some had died on the track behind me. I ran as best I could with the whole bloody-bruised-body problem and jumped, well, into the hurdle.
It took some time to disentangle myself from it. I think I might have broken it, but I had to get across the finish line, so I stood up. Only one of my legs was bendy and the hurdle was attached to my shirt, so it had to come across the finish line with me. It clanked, or maybe that was just my damaged parts clanking.
When I got across the line, I fell down again, with the hurdle on top of me. And then the other kids were on top of me, too, yanking the hurdle off and laughing, but mostly I think
laughing with me although I was very far from laughing myself. But still. Even some of the kids from the Red Team were crowding around me, like Xavier Schwartz, who said, “Justin Case is the most awesome hurdler EVER!”
Not Cash, though. What he said is, “Yeah, that’s why we LOST. AGAIN.” Then he kicked some rocks. He is the kind of kid who really, really hates losing. He stomped away toward the tennis courts.
While I was watching him go, Natalia asked if I was okay. I said yes, and then I didn’t even go to the nurse, not just because I didn’t want Cash to tease me for being a nurse-going baby as well as a terrible loser-hurdler but also because Montana C. was smiling at me. And then especially because she said to Natalia, “Justin just has no quit in him at all.”
“True that,” Natalia said back.
Which was not a gold medal and definitely didn’t make Cash stop hating me, but still, it was pretty cool. I kept those words in my mind the whole rest of the day, and I was so busy enjoying those nice words that I hardly noticed my sore knees at all until I got home to my dog who had done about as well at doggie Obedience School as I had done at hurdles.
We talked about it in Dog for a while and then watched cartoons together.
August 26, Thursday
The reason I dropped my camp bag on the lawn this morning is that just as I was about to get onto the camp bus, the bus farted really loud, right in my direction.
Montana C. saw. She laughed. She laughed the whole time I gathered up my stuff and climbed up the farty bus’s steps and trudged down the aisle of high-backed bus seats, deciding where to sit, because obviously not with Montana C., who was laughing at me.
Until she said, “Hey, Justin Case! Come sit with me and tell me why that bus fart made you drop your stuff!”
“Because,” I yelled back. “Bus farts are toxic!”
“Yeah,” said some older kids in the back row. “They totally are. Toxic.”
Some little kids I was passing giggled together, whispering, “Bus farts.”
When I got to Montana C.’s seat, she said, “They are toxic. But maybe they give you superpowers. Maybe you got turned into Bus Fart Man.”
And it is possible she was right, because of what happened at the swim meet today and also the fact that the horrible flip-flops of doom stopped hurting my feet at all.
Well, the first thing that happened at the swim meet, which is apparently the Grande Finale of Color War, is that I came in second in backstroke.
I was swimming against Gianni Schicci and Bartholomew Wiggins and also Koji (who came in first), but still, I think the combination of Bus Fart power and practicing backstroke all weekend, including the extra time after Gingy kicked Mr. Cranky Pants out of the pool, really made a difference.
I was sitting on the edge of the pool with my silver medal around my neck and my feet dangling in the water during the underwater swim competition. Next to me on one side was Koji, whose gold medal was the same size as my silver medal, so it’s not a huge deal, just a different color, and Cash, who had two golds and a silver from his races. I still had cannonballing to come, I was telling myself; I might still get a gold if I could manage to do Poopsie’s invention: the Super Dooper Big Boogie Boondoggle Splashmaster Cannonball. If I could just do that one awesome cannonball trick as well and splashy as I’ve been practicing it and Poopsie has been coaching me to do it all summer, it could be a medal winner, maybe even gold. And maybe that is the gold that will put the Blue Team over the top, and I could be the hero of Camp GoldenBrook after all. I was imagining myself being carried on everybody’s shoulders, with everybody chanting, JUSTIN, JUSTIN, and maybe a few Hooray for Justin’s in there, too.
It was a happy imagining. And the sun was perfect on my head, warm but gentle, and the pool area smelled like clean laundry. So everything was good.
But a bad feeling happened in my belly. At first, I wasn’t sure why. I asked myself if maybe it was because I knew in reality that it was unlikely that people would carry me on their shoulders and even if they did I would probably fall off and crack my head open. But no, myself answered, that is just reality. That is not the reason for my sick-belly feeling.
I squinted harder into the pool. Montana C. was touching the wall at the far end of the pool, and she was smiling her great big Montana C. smile with droplets of water plinking off her eyelashes back into the pool. I almost smiled at her, but then I didn’t because she is on the Red Team, and that is when I looked for the underwater racer from my team, the Blue Team, which was Penelope Ann Murphy.
I didn’t see her. And then I did.
She was under the water. She was not coming up.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Penelope Ann Murphy is not coming up from under the water!”
“You are the most worried kid ever,” somebody said to me, maybe Xavier—probably Xavier because he says that kind of thing about me a lot. But I can’t be sure because I didn’t look over there. I was looking at James/Jay.
“Save her!” I yelled at him.
“She’s just joking around,” James/Jay said, rolling his eyes.
“She’s not,” I said. “She might not be!” I stood up on the edge of the pool.
“You go in, your team is disqualified,” James/Jay said.
I threw off my medal. It clonked Cash on the head. “Hey,” he growled.
“I think maybe she’s not kidding,” I said to him, and I dived into the pool.
I didn’t really have a plan. I never got the pennies off the floor of the pool, so there was pretty little chance I could get a whole Penelope Ann Murphy up from there. But I kicked harder than Gingy even kicked at Mr. Cranky Pants and aimed for Penelope Ann Murphy, blinking my stinging eyes that had never been open underwater before.
Cash zoomed past me, but not by much. We got to Penelope Ann Murphy at about the same second, right after two grown-ups got there. We all grabbed parts of Penelope Ann and yanked her by the armpits and the kneepits up and up and up.
I burst through the ceiling of water into the air. I gulped my biggest, most delicious mouthful of air of my whole life. Then I gulped a few more while my overcooked-spaghetti legs flopped a lot less powerfully than a few seconds earlier but enough to get my portion of Penelope Ann Murphy over to the edge of the pool just a few seconds after the part that Cash and the grown-ups, who it turned out were the lifeguards, were dragging.
Before that second, I had never seen the lifeguards do anything but wear sunglasses, blow whistles, and point.
Turns out, they have other skills, too. They dragged Penelope Ann out of the pool and did stuff to her until she coughed and maybe even puked on the concrete.
For the first time all summer, everybody cheered for her.
Cash and I were still in the pool. We rested on our forearms on the edge. He squinted at me with one of his blue eyes shut, just like the leader of my bad-guy knights, Steeltrap.
“Sorry,” I told him. “Guess I lost us another one.”
Cash shrugged. “Whatevs,” he said. “Cool rescue.”
I smiled. “Yeah,” I said.
We didn’t end up getting disqualified. We got thanked by Eddie, the head of the whole camp. James/Jay got talked to—and not in a complimenting way. In a What the heck is wrong with you, and you are not welcome back at camp next summer, you mean counselor you kind of way.
Cash and I watched that whole thing happen. Cash said, “He was a bad counselor anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, so, was his name James or Jay?”
“Jake,” Cash said.
“Oh,” I said. “Jake? Really?”
“You kidding?” Cash asked.
But I didn’t answer because Mike was calling my name to come back to the pool for the Cannonball Event.
I stood at the edge of the pool picturing Poopsie in his huge scuba goggles, and that made me giggle a little. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and decided to be bold. I did the Super Dooper Big Boogie Boondoggle Splashmaster Cannonball, and mighty forces came to my aid
. It was the best I ever did it, including all the hundreds of splashy practices.
I got the Gold.
August 27, Friday
Last day.
Penelope Ann Murphy didn’t come to camp. I had made a decision in my mind on the bus that I would give her my perfect shell. Thinking of that made me almost start to cry. Of course not all the way to tears or anything. It’s just, it is my perfect shell. How often does a person get something perfect? But my answer on the inside of me to that question was maybe Penelope had a really hard summer and nothing perfect to hold, even in her memory. So maybe she should have my shell.
But luckily she was absent, so I did not have to do that generous thing.
The other good thing that happened was all day we just basically played. There were lots of ice-cream sandwiches and do whatever you wants and an extra Quad in the middle of the day to sing the silliest songs and get up and do silly dances, which everybody did, even the boys, even the counselors. Natalia danced with Mike a few times. Then she danced for a second with me. That turned my legs into dough, so I had to rest up a little.
Then it was time to settle down for the prizes. It’s not like Rec Soccer where everybody gets a prize, there’s just a big plaque that hangs in the social hall from then on forever of who won Color War.
Red Team won.
“Whatevs,” I said to Cash, who was leaning back on his hands on the towel next to mine.
He smiled at me. “Yeah,” he said.
I smiled back. Because, well, everybody says Yeah to Cash, and there he was saying it to me instead of me Getting It for losing Color War for him.
“We’ll get ’em next year,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said instead of yeah. But what I was thinking was …
1. I am going to Science Camp next year. Not quitting is one thing. Signing up again is just nuts.
2. Is Cash not going back to Tennessee?
3. Oh, no.
August 28, Saturday
I threw the horrible flip-flops of doom in the garbage can. Not the one in the kitchen, the one in the garage.
